


With Hands Tied Backwards

by GibbousLunation



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst and Humor, Character Study, Dissociation, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Season 4 Spoilers, mentions of death but no actual death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-31
Updated: 2017-10-31
Packaged: 2019-01-27 11:28:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12580840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GibbousLunation/pseuds/GibbousLunation
Summary: Lance had this problem, just sometimes, where his brain got all floaty and his hands started feeling like maybe he’d forgotten to put them on properly in the morning. Like they were backwards and inverted and everything else was upside down too.  Lance's eyes slide out of focus staring at twinkling stars thousands of miles away, he lines his knuckles up in neat little rows, and he thinks too much about too many things.Team Voltron is falling apart in little ways, and building itself up taller ten times over.It started as a joke, “You know what would suck?"It was easier to pretend they weren't just kids fighting a war they'd never asked for, probably. "Angry edgy Not-Slav giving you CPR with his beak."





	With Hands Tied Backwards

**Author's Note:**

> this fic has nothing to do with halloween but I'm posting it today so happy halloween! Warnings for dissociation, death mentions, ptsd, and a lot of stressed kids.

It had started as a joke. A night spent too long with slippered feet dangling over a grand expanse of nothing, a warm cup of green something, a warm curl of a smile.

They’d been tired, exhausted really. The missions kept growing longer and longer, Keith kept showing up later and later. Blade missions pulling him away in fragments and steady footsteps. Everyone carried forward and smiled and it was all teeth.

“You know what would suck?” He didn’t take his eyes off the one particular star in the particular cluster beneath him, his gaze drifted out of focus.

Keith brushed his shoulder with his own, not quite a comfort, but something. “What?”

Lance took a sip of his mug, the not quite familiar taste was not quite nice, but something, too. “Say you get back from a mission, yanno, like we’ve taken out the entire Galra empire. No more Hagar, no more Lotor, none of it. You walk out of your lion feeling like you could rocket launch into the sun and burst through the other side, and you trip. Smack your face on the eject button and whoops! No helmet. Bye bye. You’re a frozen Keith-sicle.”

“Hmm.” Keith blinked, his brows did his particular furrowed-contemplation look like he was trying to figure out an impossible puzzle. "That would suck."

“You know what would be worse?” Lance’s fingers tapped against his mug, the particular star twisted and span, the light stretching as his unfocused gaze trailed along with it. “What if you’d literally just like. Locked Hagar in perma-space jail, and you were wiping your hands and maybe singing a little cause ha! Take that you big ol’ loser! They don't call me the hero of the galaxy for nothing! And oh no, you stubbed your toe on a wall. Except you hit a nerve, and man you’ve had a stressful day, all that adrenaline coursing through you? Bam! Your brain explodes.”

Keith nodded, humming peaceably. Lance caught the thinning of his lips in his periphery, gaze still trapped on that one winking star just to the left of the bigger twinkling one. He wondered vaguely if there was a planet there, if that planet was the one in ten million odds of having the right conditions for life. If one in ten million billion had blue skies and oceans that rolled over pale beaches. He wondered if that planet had holidays, if the younger kids went surfing in the summer, if they worked part time at their families restaurant outside of school. If they dreamed of going out to see the stars one day.

“What if you were at a big celebration, about to give a speech, and your bayard malfunctioned. Shot you right through your big toe, the one with all the nerves. Doubly embarrassing because your brain explodes _and_ it’s in front of a crowd. And Allura would give you a lecture for traumatizing the guests.”

Lance blinked. “That’s a good one.”

Keith shrugged, Lance could hear his smirk.

The warm green drink in his hands had faded to a gentle lukewarm, Lance flexed his toes in his slippers, watching the way mini Blue’s cat nose blocked out the stars.

“Picture this, okay. Stuck in a space whale’s blowhole.”

“Ew, does it smell like fish?” Keith’s nose crinkled.

“I said whale!”

“Whale, fish. You’re avoiding the question.”

Lance snorted, pulling his gaze to the inside of his mug, the swirls making tiny orbits with the jostling of his laugh. “Okay, okay. It doesn’t smell like fish, but. You gotta die knowing the whale’s going to sneeze you like a big booger.”

“Damn. You have very disturbingly specific fish related fears, Lance. Anyway, I got one. Bad hair day so terrible you literally die of embarrassment.”

“That’s just dumb.”

Keith hummed, a mischievous smile to his words. “Yeah, I guess that would seem over the top to you, I mean if _every_ day’s a bad hair day…”

Lance placed a hand over his heart dramatically, finally turning his gaze. “You wound me. You have cut me deep, Keith. I may never recover, being insulted by the guy with a literal mullet. An actual mullet, in this the year of not the 80's. Pot, kettle.”

Keith chuckled, nudging his shoulder again.

“What about death by Slav giving you a slightly too aggressive hug?” Keith shuddered at his own words, a crooked smile flashed towards Lance.

“Oh god, I have to draw the line at Slav hugs. I am an unwilling participant to this mental image, Keith what have you done?”

Keith turned towards him, expression falling completely serious. “Slav, with Coran’s sweat thing, hugging you.”

“Mercy! I beg of you! I’m tapping out, horrible!”  Lance laughed and it felt a little more better than bad. It felt a little more great than better when Keith laughed back too.

 

 

 

Lance had this problem, just sometimes, where his brain got all floaty and his hands started feeling like maybe he’d forgotten to put them on properly in the morning. Like they were backwards and inverted and everything else was upside down too.

It mostly happened when he was over tired, or when he’d been running on straight anxiety and survival mode for too long, or when Keith didn’t show up when he said he would and everyone just had to pretend they hadn’t heard the reports of casualties nearby. But it was fine, because Keith came back eventually. Because Keith needed this.

Because they all had something back home they were looking for, or someone they could remember, and Lance understood family more than Keith seemed to think he did.

Because Shiro smiled sometimes like his mouth didn’t fit quite right on his face, and his shoulders were always so stiff and held so far away, like when they’d first found him. When he hadn’t realized his Galra tech arm was something that could help, that it was more than a marker of what they’d taken. Because Shiro was pushing for something that was breaking Keith with every split-second sigh between words, but even as Hunk and Lance and Pidge exchanged uneasy glances and Allura and Coran fretted nearby, they had a universe to protect. They’d all broken off bits and pieces of themselves to help, and were starting to wonder if they’d have anything left by the end of it all anyways.

Not that it mattered, not that what any of them wanted really mattered. They all woke up too early, went to bed too late after their brains buzzed and whirled for hours, had far too many nightmares, but it was _fine._  They were all fine. Lance had torn down their terrible homemade calendar after the first year away from Earth cycled into their second, and somewhere blurred into their third. After Pidge had calculated that with the blackholes and wormholes and astrophysics laden mumbo jumbo it was probably longer than that. Time isn't real, Pidge had tried to laugh, but her eyes went all foggy and her lips wobbled and Lance jolted into a story about some cute alien girl that had tried to get him to get space married, apparently, and waggled his fingers the wrong way until Pidge smiled.

None of it mattered, anyways.

 

 

 

Lance didn’t really know when it had happened, exactly. When Keith and Lance stopped being a versus. When Lance could give Keith a specific look at a specific time and have Keith shake his head and walk away with slumped shoulders and an ‘alright, okay, fine.’ He didn’t really care either; Keith was just, team. And then more-than-teammate. Point A to point B. Red and Blue were opposites, but Lance was more red than blue these days and Keith was more gone than here. 

The way their hands fit together made him feel a little less like he'd swallowed the star stuff outside his window, Blue was Red until it wasn't that either.

 

 

He met Keith at the airlock with hooks and lures tangling in his throat, pulling him a hundred different directions and keeping him from flying apart. Keith didn’t look surprised these days at anything, war did strange things to people. Even seeing Lance 'but Slightly To The Left' lately only brought a sad sort of divot to his brows before he shook his head and his bangs blocked out the rest of his expression.

“Where’s Hunk?” Codeword, Lance’s brain thought, a clothing line across a cloud, a post it note on a steamy mirror. _How bad is it?_

Lance’s hands twitched, upside down and parallel. He blinked and it felt too long, Keith was pulling an arm around his shoulder already, gently jostling his numb legs forwards.

“Couch or floor?” Keith asked again, and _oh_ , they were in Lance’s room already. Lance wordlessly slid to the pile of strewn blankets on the floor. He watched his knuckles, making sure his hands lined up. Knuckle to finger, palms to wrist, nothing moved while he was watching. If he stopped watching that’s when they slid around and got lost. He worried they wouldn't find their way back. 

Sometimes Lance went walking when things got like this, like he was chasing something. The reflection of the full moon in his rear view mirror. The ship was only so big, Keith always found him. And Hunk made him food that smelled like home, and Pidge rambled about whatever project Matt had come up with, and Lance dug his way out of the ocean depths somehow. Sometimes Keith held his hands trapped against his palms, and it was okay too. 

Keith sighed a long breath. “You know, I was just thinking, how tragic would it be, if you’d blown up Galra home base, everyone was celebrating and uh oh. Allura sneezed and her wormhole magic ate you like a Pac Man squid. Sound effects and all.”

Lance closed his fist, the knuckles lined up in pearly rows. “…don’t eat squid.”

Keith rolled his eyes, scooting a little closer. “Not all of us had time to be video game nerds growing up, so what if I don’t know anything about Pac Men.”

Lance let out a puff of air through his nose that they both pretended was a laugh.

“Okay, then what about if Pidge tried to upgrade your video game system and somehow got us all stuck inside, like uh. Spy Kids. You told me about Spy Kids, don't expect me to know anything more than the name.”

Lance thought that might be fun, some of his games had low-low res pixels. They didn’t even have hands to put on backwards.

“-but! Kaltenecker accidentally eats through a cable that glitches us all into uh. Mini Coran moustaches. With legs.”

Lance did snort at that, and blinked in surprise at himself. “…Just legs?”

Keith poked him gently. “Yeah, legs and moustache. And Coran has to throw us like frisbee’s because, yanno. Video game logic.”

 _Keith has never played a single video game in his life, how is that possible_ , Lance thought. It was a welcome change from the fog. Lance leaned into Keith, he let his hands fall on his lap. “So…I have weirdly specific fish fears, but no one’s going to address your apparent facial hair phobia?”

_Hey, that was a whole sentence. With words. Several of them, in fact. Nice._

Keith paused for a moment, lips thinning. “Fish with moustaches.” He nodded to himself, confidently.

Laughter bubbled through Lance before he could think, leaving him achey in a mostly nice way; a warm, grounding way. He reached a shaky hand up to wipe at the tears of mirth that had formed in his eyes, Keith giggled a little back.  “Legs too?” He asked, snickering. “Oh!” He met Keith’s sparkling eyes with all the astonishment of a theorist uncovering the meaning of life.

“Fishnets.” Lance had thought of a pun, a whole pun on his own. _Take that brain fog._

“…where?”

Keith looked confused, but Lance cracked up even more, grasping at his middle and wheezing as he collapsed forwards.

“I.. haha, I got one,” Lance choked out. “Laughing so hard at Lotor’s brand new terrible facial hair, you break all of your bones at once.”

“At once? That’s more talented than it is terrible.” Keith arched an eyebrow at him, smiling in the lopsided way that made Lance’s brain run in confusing wild circles. Keith's hands tangled against his and Lance leaned back up, and his eyes even focused properly.  It felt like a win, for once. 

 

 

 

They all had their own problems, really. Shiro had his PTSD that left him pacing all hours of the night sometimes, muttering. Once Lance had groggily stumbled across him, and the look of terror that had flashed across Shiro’s face for a split second still thrummed under Lance’s skin. The pure lack of recognition, like Shiro didn’t know where he was, or worse, who Lance was. Lance didn’t walk around at night anymore.

Pidge was a little obsessive, maybe a little more obsessive than they all knew what to do with. _Computer screens were bad for your eyes! Pidge, have you eaten today? Pidge, staring at the same video clip for fourteen hours straight won’t help._ Well, of course, until it did. The point still- _probably_ \- stood. But Matt was helping, Pidge actually joined Lance on video game night sometimes, which was an accomplishment considering Lance had been playing solo mode basically since they’d hooked the thing up. His controller already had a worn-down X button, but he let Pidge use it anyways.

She was terrifyingly competitive, but her eyes lit up in a way he caught himself feeling nostalgic over, and that was enough of a reason to let her win every time. All the time. 

Hunk fixed and tinkered when he was nervous, or overwhelmed, or not doing anything else. Lance almost screamed the first time he’d walked into the kitchen and the food goo dispensers had automatically detected his presence and portioned out food for him. He did scream when the ship had suddenly developed automatic doors everywhere instead of needing to hit weirdly positioned buttons.

Lance had been worried, for a moment, with Matt’s return, that the twin tech duo would be suddenly replaced with a sibling synergy or some other weird consonance with too many s’. Matt, proved his fears moot though. He was just cheerful and wide puppy eyed, with so much proud sibling vibes it made Lance’s chest clench up uncomfortably when he caught it; a beacon of pure-heartedness who had immediately deferred to Hunk’s mechanical expertise and purposely carved out a place for the guy with their tech talk bonding time. Hunk’s eyes twinkled extra brightly and honestly, Lance was glad.

Really, Matt was a really great addition that Lance should be more grateful for, considering he was often too busy being the odd ‘off-brand’ Lance that kinda just hovered nearby watching himself interact vaguely with everyone. Matt was definitely picking up the slack these days in terms of comedic relief and sunshine energy.

But, it irked him. Like, they shouldn't be happy with everything around them, like every time Lance laughed it was selfish. Not with Keith dipping out to the inky depths of space for longer and longer periods of time, the closer and closer calls that left all of them shaky and brittle around the edges. Not with Hunk sobbing against Lance's shoulder, worried that Shay wasn't okay, where ever she was, and that he had no way of asking. The third time in the span of two days that he’d bundled Allura off - Coran holding her hands carefully and making quiet soothing noises with a concern that Coran should never officially ever be allowed to wear and dredged up his headphones to drape around her neck - , made something in Lance’s chest falter and lash out angrily.

Then Keith had announced he’d be leaving for a month, and the fight left him faster than his eyes could slide out of focus.

“You know what would be really fucked up?” He remembered asking, Keith in full Marmora gear, holding Lance's jacket like it was something fragile- precious- and watching him with that same furrowed half sad that wasn’t quite anything at all. “Losing an inhaler out in the nowhere hell pocket dimension, having angry edgy Not-Slav give you CPR with his beak.”

Keith half laughed and Lance felt a weight shift somewhere off his ribs, anything to erase that stupid furrow. Lance’s hands twitched though, and he sighed.

“Don’t uh, don’t lose your communicator okay? I have like, three solid good what-if’s for that particular event. And remember if I win the bet I get to make all the mullet jokes I want.”

Keith gave him a considering look, his own fingers twitching as something fond tilted his painfully sad smile just to the side of something too big for Lance to name. “We can’t have that. You’d run out of mullet related puns the first day, then where would you be?”

Several flippant answers flashed through Lance’s brain. _I can’t even mullet over. Get a damn haircut and neither of us will have any problems. If your mullet gets stuck in an air vent I can’t promise I won’t laugh at your funeral._

His lips parted and his gaze caught on two flickers of twinkling lights in Keith’s eyes.

“Don’t go.”

His throat closed up around the words as soon as they’d crawled through and escaped. An after thought of regret. Keith’s expression jolted, fell, and flattened all at once. A mosaic of words Keith would never speak. _“Lance…”_ The single syllable was hoarse, code-worded in itself, Keith needed this. Keith was trapped here, on this ship. He was a burning fire that was slowly suffocating and he _needed this._  

It didn't matter what Lance needed, he was selfish. 

Lance clenched his fists and counted the bone white rows. He turned away before Keith could even think about throwing everything he wanted away just because Lance was a little fucked up and a little greedy. “Yeah, I mean. I figured. Sorry, just. Yeah.” There was a prickle behind his eyes that he hated, his fingers dug perfect red crescents into his palms but at least they were on the right way down.

 

 

 

Piloting Red wasn’t exactly the same as the floaty brain fog issue he kept having, but it didn’t help. Red was great, ferocious and protective and loving in a way that nearly stole the breath from his lungs the first time he’d sat in Keith’s place. It was _so_ Keith, down to the over the top anger and the twinge of impulsiveness that kept prickling in his elbows and the undersides of his knees. But it was Keith. Red was Keith, Blue was Lance. Except, Blue wasn’t Lance anymore, really. And Red was still Keith, but so was Black.

Backwards and inverted and upside down.

Allura was a fantastic pilot, though, and Lance felt a vague sort of pride knowing his best girl was with his other best girl and they’d keep having his and everyone’s backs. Probably better than he could have, too. Not that any of this was about him, though. And Lance wasn’t about to make it about him either. War was war and Blue loved him, it was just that big magic space lions were giant enough to love more than one and longer than anything. Plus, the way Allura’s eyes lit up and her voice filtered through the intercoms with unbridled excitement was inspiring and wonderful all in itself.

Blue brought out the heart in Allura that she'd always had. Just more proof that Allura was really _the best_. Lance was a little jealous of Blue, having a heart that big meant she could love all of them and all the people before them without feeling like she would implode. Lance thought that would be a good way to die, at least, from loving too much. He didn't text it to Keith though, thinking of his sad not-sad eyes. Lance was good with silently imploding anyways. 

Lance didn’t like the thought that he was warming Keith’s seat for him, though. Especially when Shiro found his way back, haltingly and cautiously, but back nonetheless. Lance didn’t like knowing Keith would gladly step out of that chair, would probably not say anything about it because he’d find some other way to help regardless. Because he wouldn’t take it from Lance and wouldn’t dare let Lance make the choice for them either. Because he was so, damn, selfless. And Lance was too greedy. 

Lance didn’t like feeling him and Red was more ‘Red and Not Keith’ than it was anything else.

Lance didn’t like knowing his place with Red was another excuse among a long list of reasons why Keith was pulling away, little by little.

Piloting Red was like knowing you were a second-rate replacement, but that really, it didn’t matter either.

 

 

 

Coran enlisted Lance’s help in entertaining their escaped prisoners, they spent long hours with the scared hollow eyed newly minted ‘freedom fighters’ and Lance tried to ignore how young most of them were. Then he tried to ignore how young he was, how Pidge was barely a teenager at all. He ended up ignoring a lot. 

Keith’s birthday came and went without so much as a video message, but it was okay, because Keith had sent him a text earlier about dying by being baked into a really nasty pie nobody even liked – _‘I bake myself into a pie for you and you don’t even like it? Four years we’ve been friends and you squander the toils of my cooking?’_ \- and Lance had laughed, so it was fine.

Lance’s video game nights became one player story mode quests again, the X button got a little more worn down, and Lance’s music player migrated into Allura’s room to help her sleep. Hunk laughed louder and rambled more animatedly, but his fingers twitched and more upgrades showed up left and right. He joined Lance once every few missions for their relaxation nights just like in the garrison, Lance lay sprawled across Hunk's knees ready to implode with the amount of _stuff_ in his heart, and asked Hunk what the best way to go would be.

"Death by puppies," Hunk nodded seriously, then winced. "Wait, they have sharp teeth though. Never mind. I don't want to tarnish puppies good names collectively. Maybe, death by being too happy? But that would make everyone else sad. Maybe there isn't a good way to go?" 

Hunk always answered like there was a right answer, but Hunk was probably the smartest dude Lance knew. 

"Death in your sleep is peaceful," Lance shrugged, making weird shadows on the tiled ceiling with the light of his communicator and his hands. They sprawled long, draping and reaching shadows. Neither right way up or wrong ways down. "Death by not dying."

Hunk poked him, "that's not a thing, but Lance I support you and your nonsense unconditionally. On the condition there's no actual death by happiness or any of the aforementioned implausible scenarios." 

"That is a condition, buddy."

"Exactly, no dying by not dying but also no dying. Just as logical, right?"

He laughed, smacked Hunk's knee playfully. 

"Whatever you say buddy, I blame you for my puppy related nightmares now, though." 

"I took that back!"

Lance stretched his hands wide again, trying to count the knuckles that existed and didn't exist and tried not to think about the way Keith’s crooked smile blocked out the half twinkling stars a hundred thousand miles away.

 

 

 

Somehow, they all made progress, little by little. Freedom fighter numbers increased, liberated planets kept popping up in greens and blues all over the map, hope was a tangible current behind rows of grinning teeth.

Keith showed up in a video from the Blades, and barely said two words, he had a new scar on his temple. Lance and Hunk talked about nothing and everything into the late hours of the night, until Lance’s eyes slowly fell into focus on the worried lines around Hunk’s eyes and his hands didn't stretch as long on the ceiling tiles.

 

 

 

 

Bat Lance: ‘Space coconut, falls on your head out of nowhere. Embarrassing and ironic.’ 

Boy Wonder: ‘how is that ironic?’

Boy Wonder: ‘death by papercut’

Bat Lance: ‘it’s ironic because shut up. Coran makes you laugh while drinking Nunville, unimaginable agony.’

Boy Wonder: ‘fake.’

Boy Wonder: ‘never catch me alive drinking that ever again’

Bat Lance: ‘ah contraire my fair mullet, the point my good doofus, is that you wouldn’t be alive.’

Boy Wonder: ‘fair and correct and I have no rebuttal. Sudden allergic reaction to galra fur.’

Bat Lance: ‘are you saying you’d be allergic to yourself?’

Boy Wonder: ‘I don’t have fur, Lance.’

Bat Lance: ‘have you checked recently? No sudden cravings for awful egomaniacal speeches? No twitchy cat ears?’

Boy Wonder: ‘koala ears and no, thank you.’

Bat Lance: ‘koala ears?????’

Bat Lance: ‘keith you can’t just dump that kind of comedic gold on me and run away!’

Bat Lance: ‘keith! You coward! Own up to the truth!’

Bat Lance: ‘keith?’

 

 

 

Allura and Coran started asking him for things all the time, just small stuff.

“Lance, do you know where I might find the cleaning cloth you were using?”

“Lance, could you assist me with recalibrating the dishes over here? Thank you, my boy!”

“Coran and I were wondering if we might get your assistance with Kaltenecker again?”

He knew what they were doing. He knew they were worried, and maybe being a tad invasive in their worry. It wasn’t like Lance was being particularly withdrawn or upset or anything, it was just that it had been ten days since Keith stopped replying mid conversation and Lance hadn’t gotten a single reply since. It was just that Shiro didn’t really talk to him, or anyone, and Hunk had heard back from Shay and he'd been happier lately and Lance felt bad dumping his probably over the top anxieties on the guy all the time. Because Keith was fine. He had to be. Unless he’d tripped on his space shoes and catapulted himself into a black hole. Or he’d gotten lost in the emptiness of nothing because he’d taken a wrong left turn and an electromagnetic wave shorted out his navigational system. Or-

“Lance! Be a darling and help me set the table, would you?”

“Princess, I am all over that table.”

“…If I come over there and you’re sprawled across the table again-“

“Right, right. Helpfully setting the table the proper and nice paladin way.”  

Maybe Allura and Coran were helping, maybe they were helping a lot. Lance’s hands felt more backwards than frontways these days. He couldn’t feel his face to know if he was smiling the right way anymore either.

 

 

 

It all came to a roaring crescendo faster than Lance knew how to keep up with.

The Blades were doing their stealthy thing, a flash of Keith nodding seriously in the background during a video call, and Lance was on the frontlines like always.

Except, Keith wasn’t with them.

The biggest battle they’d potentially ever faced and no one was charging off alone like a reckless idiot. He swallowed roughly, flexed his fingers slowly on the controls. He couldn’t see his knuckles with his armour on.

They’d planned it all out, every aspect, but then there was the planet and a trap and god, there was always a trap, and they should have known somehow. There’d been a split moment, absolute sureness and confidence and he’d been spending enough time with Allura lately to know that her natural talent and the way Blue immediately latched on to her was something special.

“You’re the heart of Voltron,” he said, because without her, none of them would have made it this far to begin with. Without her and Coran, Lance would have imploded inwards weeks ago. A spark jolted him through the lions, Blue reaching out with a fondness that made him feel silly for ever thinking Blue might have forgotten him even for a second. Made him feel silly for letting himself be greedy or needy or anything other than quietly imploding with _stuff._

It had been good, like his eyes were in high definition, his mind de-fogged. He could even feel the smile on his lips and it felt, right. "Thank you Lance," Allura said, and Lance felt his heart grow large enough to smile wider around the addition of yet more stuff to his over stuffed heart. 

But then, again it all came crashing down around his ears almost as soon as it had rebuilt. There was the bomb, the shield, and the weapon and _Keith_. No crushing gravity field could touch the lead ball of absolute dread dragging down the center of his spine as Keith’s stupid tiny speeder started picking up velocity on his maps.

None of them had been able to speak, the constant flowing current of Voltron that tied them all together just reverberated with ice and shock and a string of ‘ _no no no’_ as Lance realized he was actually about to watch Keith die and couldn’t do anything at all to stop it.

Somewhere along the line, Lance had squeezed his eyes shut as his chest hitched. He saw the burn bright of an explosion behind his eyelids and thought heartbreak wasn’t usually meant to be so visceral. Not that Lance had ever had his heart broken, but he was sure then that his own chest had splintered inwards like a collapsing star, that it was only a matter of time before the rest of him followed suit. He'd imploded with the opposite of happiness and Hunk had been right probably, that there was no good way to go but this had to be the _worst_. 

“Keith!” Matt was still yelling over the intercom, for a moment Lance wanted to tell him to stop, to leave it. Space was meant to be silent anyways. The explosion had only lasted a millisecond anyways. Why should any of them be allowed to burn more brightly, to combust more steadily than Keith had. But then, why should Lance be able to do anything when Keith was- when he-

“Was that…. Lotor?” That was Keith, Keith was. Lance snapped his eyes open, seeing Keith’s weary and drawn face with his furrowed brows and wide eyed confusion staring back. “Lotor just…helped us?”

“What the quiznack is going on,” Pidge breathed, and it was like sound suddenly rushed back inwards, like Lance had breached the surface of a pool and was heaving on gulps of air. Except, he was. Literally. His ribs strained against his next gasp, his hands clenched and went numb.

“Oh, shit,” Hunk muttered, Lance thought that was odd, distantly. Hunk didn’t swear. He maybe laughed a little, but it was lost in his gasping breaths, Keith was. He'd.

“Lance…?” Keith’s face popped up again and suddenly it was unbearable. Lance yanked away, closing the connection, breaking Voltron into bits and parts and Red was howling at him, curling around him anxiously like a fretting mother and it was so much.

 

  
“Wh- what if. What if you died? Ha, haha! Diving straight into a Galra ship. That’s-“ Lance’s gaze kept flickering between the blinking panels in front of him, the myriad of incoming alerts and too many concerned ‘Lance?’ ‘s. He muted them all by smacking his hand on the controls, flopping his fingers like useless dying fish, he couldn’t unclench his hands, couldn’t take a full breath even. The paladins were all trailing off to help, back to base, back to work, but Lance. He was on a record player and it was skipping. 

“Lance-“ Keith’s channel was still open, right, he hadn’t been with Voltron. He’d been. In a speeder, alone. He had a special channel that Lance couldn’t remember the button for. Keith had been on a ship meant for diving, piercing. A one way trip, and he’d. Keith had. 

“That’s. You win!” He was a little hysterical, he realized. Red pawed at him mentally, and he leaned on her enough to let her defensive cold anger take over for a moment.

“Let’s just finish this.” He punched the controls again, speeding towards Matt and the rebels, muting himself and letting Shiro’s orders filter back in, forcing a laugh to calm Hunk's nerves he couldn't feel in his chest. 

 

 

 

Later, a longer later than a sooner one, a later that meant dragging feet and dark circles. A later that meant Lance was half in the door and half twenty feet to the right, floating just beyond the airlock watching everything with a vague sort of disinterest. The smiling faces around him said ‘victory’, they looked relieved, hopeful. Lance was glad, functioning on autopilot enough to even shoot a wink now and again, give the whole confident Paladin shtick they’d basically all perfected thanks to Coran. Maybe also thanks to terrible coping mechanisms, a voice that sounded a lot like Pidge snarked in his head.

Maybe that too.

Hunk had his shoulder slightly pressed into Lance’s, and a promise of a pillow fort and blank staring at a ceiling while lying flat on the floor, tucked tightly to Lance’s heart. Allura had wanted to rush them all off for ‘debriefing’, her diplomatic code word for their collective breakdowns after close calls these days, but they had appearances to uphold. And a united rebel force to congratulate and remember. What they wanted didn't matter.

Lance was fine, though. Everyone else was fine, as much as they could be, so Lance could be too.

Just as long as he didn’t think about the little dot on his map with Keith’s signature that kept speeding towards certain death he was-

Hunk’s hand squeezed his shoulder, Lance stopped scratching at his hands.

“And you! Pilot of the Red lion, Land, was it?”

Lance plastered on a smile and couldn’t feel his lips stretch. “It’s Lance, yeah, that’s me. Best paladin around.”

 

 

 

“I got one,” he said distantly, feet dangling out on an expanse of nothing. “You’re surrounded by everyone you know and love, and you choose the dumb, impulsive thing anyways. Making them all sit around and watch it happen.”

His hands were cold, tingling and frozen, backwards and upside down. His eyes were lost on a pocket of nothing, a black hole a million miles away.

The footsteps behind him froze too.

“That would be pretty bad,” Keith’s voice sounded rough, gravelly.

“Or how about,” Lance didn’t blink, his eyes burned. “Not replying to messages, even though you said you would, and the second you reappear, you make a choice that wasn’t yours to make. You don’t even know if it will work, but you do it anyway.” Lance’s hands twitched, his fingers curling in a loose fist. “Unrealistic, right? Why would anyone,” his voice wobbled and cracked down the middle. “Why would anyone be that stupid, right?”

Keith sat down beside him, slowly. He sighed in the sort of long slow way Lance never knew what to do with. “I’d say… that guy sounds like an asshole.”

Lance snorted, "yeah," it sounded like a sniff.

“Lance, I…” he saw Keith bite his lip in the corner of his vision, then lean his head back and stare at the ceiling instead. Lance thought his eyes maybe looked a little shiny, a little lost. He thought maybe Keith deserved it, just a little. Then he remembered where they'd been, the hallowed purple circles around Shiro's eyes, the way Pidge kept checking on Matt like he'd vanish if she strayed too far. Guilt swarmed somewhere between the icy fog, twisting nooses and figure eights on his heart.

“I know,” Lance cut him off, shoulders drawing inwards, tighter around his ears. The black hole grew a little, then shrank away. Lance’s eyes ached but he couldn’t blink.

“I had to, I-“

“I know.”

Keith sighed again, he tipped his head down so his hair fell across his eyes.

“I got one,” Keith whispered after a moment, “guy is forced to sit around, waiting for his team- his family, to tell him what’s going on. Thinks the worst. Has to make a choice, later, if he’s willing to let the worst be reality.” Keith swallowed, Lance could feel his eyes on him like a wrecking ball. “Lets the best people, the best thing in his life burn up in a flash fire in the middle of the abyss. Lets the Empire take back all the hope people have fought tooth and nail for. Lets everything fall apart just because he’s… because he's scared.”

That furrow was back on Keith’s face, he was sure, he didn’t have to look to know. But he did. Keith was crying, somehow that was worse.

“I think. I think that’d be the worst way to go. To not move and regret it forever. To be alone.”

Lance frowned, a different heat winking at his vision. Keith’s pinky laced with his limp one. "But you're not alone, I'd have... I-" he whispered back, wanting to be angry, to be anything. "You'd have been gone and. Keith, you _can't_."

“I’m still here, Lance.” Keith whispered back, and his thumb traced the tremors of Lance's cheeks, even though Lance hated that. And he knew it, he hated when Keith made him feel so much.

Cotton balls were filling his throat, he wanted to scream maybe. Squeeze his hands until his hands did break, maybe the pods would put them on again, backwards while he was sleeping. Maybe that’d already happened.

“I’m scared,” he told Keith’s too sad eyes. Keith was still wearing the Blade’s outfit, Lance’s jacket tossed over top. He’d given Keith that, he remembered. Last time, in the airlock. He’d tossed his favorite jacket at Keith like it would be enough, like just because Lance hadn’t died yet, neither would Keith.

“Me too,” Keith whispered back. His fingers laced with Lance’s, his socks blocking out the black holes a million miles away. It didn't matter, though anyways. 

"Hey, imagine," Keith pulled Lance closer, kicking his feet, Lance watched them flick out and down. "Imagine we all get out of this, one piece. And, we go back to Earth. Find a nice place by the sand maybe, and buy the biggest cake and just eat it all in one sitting like the disgusting teenagers we are at heart."

"You hate sand," Lance mumbled. 

"Yeah well, I like it more than metal floors. Ruining my story," Keith huffed, Lance maybe smiled. "Imagine, we're heroes right? People love us, or. Maybe we don't tell anyone anything, they just carry on as always and. We can just live like we want to. Go back to school maybe, get some stupid 9-5 job, turn old and grey."

"That sounds," Lance opened his mouth, closed it, frowned. A star twinkled a little brighter in the distance, Keith's feet kicked slow and constant. "You'd hate that." He settled on.

Keith laughed, breathless, watery. "I think that'd be the best way to go," his voice cracked, Lance's ribs broke to make room for more. "I'll be there, with you, and. And we'll be okay. That's what I want."

 _It doesn't matter what we want,_ Lance's brain mutinously spat. 

"Yeah," he decided after a long moment, he squeezed Keith's hand back carefully, pretended like his knuckles lined up, palm to wrist, right side up. Keith was leaving tomorrow, he still had Lance's jacket. Voltron won another day. red was still Blue and Keith was gone. His hands fit perfectly against Lance's, though, and his sigh was more good than it was heartbroken. Lance thought maybe he understood the ways things mattered in smaller ways, the way the universe did what it wanted and carried on without them, the way everyone was star stuff caught in lungs that would never breathe them out just right. 

Lance leaned more into Keith's side, for a moment he let himself be greedy. "Me too." 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Man it's been a while since I've written anything voltron related. I just had this really weirdly entertaining idea in my head about Lance and Keith playing a bad 'what-if' game as a bonding exercise and then yanno, 5000 words later it's angsty as hell. I kind of expected that but hey. 
> 
> I wrote this as a way to get past writers block on this other absolute monstrosity of a fic I'm working on, so it's meant to be kinda short and sad but. I dunno, I deal with dissociation myself so maybe it's kinda hopeful. The Voltron team needs a break, sometimes I forget they're mostly just kids and it's been an indeterminate amount of time since they've been able to be kids and. That's all kinds of rough. Anyways, let me know what you think or if you think my obscure existentialism based jokes are bad, or if you also have weirdly specific fish phobias because I can relate to that my friend. 
> 
> I'm on tumblr @klunkcat or @rooish or twitter @jimkirkisajerk if you wanna yell


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